A first attempt of geographically-distributed Multi-scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism (MuSIASEM): mapping human time and energy throughput in metropolitan Barcelona

Autor/a:

Lobo Aleu, Agustín; Baeza, Miguel Ángel

Resum:

This study presents a first attempt to extend the “Multi-scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism (MuSIASEM)” approach to a spatial dimension
using GIS techniques in the Metropolitan area of Barcelona. We use a combination of
census and commercial databases along with a detailed land cover map to create a layer
of Common Geographic Units that we populate with the local values of human time spent in different activities according to MuSIASEM hierarchical typology. In this way,
we mapped the hours of available human time, in regards to the working hours spent in different locations, putting in evidence the gradients in spatial density between the
residential location of workers (generating the work supply) and the places where the
working hours are actually taking place. We found a strong three-modal pattern of clumps of areas with different combinations of values of time spent on household activities and on paid work. We also measured and mapped spatial segregation between these two activities and put forward the conjecture that this segregation increases with higher energy throughput, as the size of the functional units must be able to cope with the flow of exosomatic energy. Finally, we discuss the effectiveness of the approach by comparing our geographic representation of exosomatic throughput to the one issued from conventional methods.